Oct. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Already a decade older than most
people can expect to live, 86-year-old Tokyo widow Toshiko Doi
plays team sports and exercises for three hours a day.

While the physical activity, including a 3-kilometer (1.9-mile) predawn walk each day, helps her fitness, the people she
interacts with may be more important for her health. Seniors
engaged in sporting and cultural pursuits have stronger
community ties that forge healthier, more independent lives,
researchers at the Nihon Fukushi University found.

Saddled with record public debt, Japan is promoting social
interaction to curb the cost of caring for the 32 percent its
people older than 60 -- the highest proportion globally. By
2050, one in five people worldwide will be over 60, from one in
nine now, according to the United Nations. Japan’s approach may
help other countries also facing rising numbers of elderly.

“It enables them to participate quite actively in
community life,” said Babatunde Osotimehin, secretary general
of the UN’s Population Fund, which is leading UN efforts on
aging. People with strong social networks “will probably not
fall ill as frequently,” he said in an interview in Tokyo,
where the UN released a report on aging this week.

Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare released
policies on health and aging that focus on strengthening
seniors’ community involvement in July, a shift from previous
approaches that centered only on individual behavior.

Finding cost-effective ways to promote healthy aging will
be critical for countries trying to reconcile rising welfare
costs and a shrinking tax base. By 2050, 42 percent of Japan’s
population will be at least 60 years old, according to Global
AgeWatch. Fifteen percent will be over 80, like Doi.

28 Million Followers

At 6 a.m. each morning, she and hundreds of her neighbors
gather in Myoshoji Park for a half hour of stretching and
breathing exercises, joining 28 million Japanese following
instructions broadcast nationally on the radio. Afterwards,
Doi’s group stays on in the park to socialize over a game of
petanque, or French bowls.

“I’m having so much fun every day,” Doi said. “I live
alone, but I’m not lonely at all. Everybody looks after me. They
phone to see how I am if I don’t show up.”

Social cohesion may be helping Japan achieve an average
life expectancy of 84 years, the world’s longest, said Ichiro
Kawachi, a social epidemiologist at Harvard University in
Boston.

Isolation Stress

The health ministry is tapping the benefits of community
supports as a pillar of its 10-year plan for healthy aging.
People with limited social networks are prone to isolation and
exclusion, and tend to suffer more from disease, a 2009 UN
Development Programme report found.

Isolation triggers multiple responses in the body that
include heightened activation of the brain’s stress systems,
increased blood pressure, reduced inflammatory control and
immunity, and perturbed sleep, scientists reported in the Annals
of the New York Academy of Science last year.

Already, babies born in Japan today can expect to live 75
years free from disability, according to HelpAge International.
That’s the highest healthy life expectancy globally.

The health ministry wants at least two out of three
Japanese citizens to feel connected with their community by
2022, compared with 46 percent reporting strong community ties
in 2007, it said in July. It also aims to have at least 80
percent of seniors participating in community activities within
a decade. Four years ago, the participation rate was 64 percent
for men and 55 percent for women.

Gray Games

In Tokyo’s Suginami ward, where Doi lives, authorities
award points in the form of stickers to seniors who participate
in government-approved activities from picking up litter, to
attending health and sporting events, to cultural activities.
Each point has a value of 50 yen (64 cents) and can be exchanged
for grocery coupons. The Suginami local government has allocated
80 million yen for the project this year, according to its
website.

“People who are disadvantaged socially and economically
have more health problems,” the health ministry in Tokyo said
in July.

Each year since 1988, the ministry has hosted the
“Nenrinpic” carnival in which seniors compete at a national
level in sports such as tennis, petanque and croquet. Doi’s
petanque team has represented Tokyo five times, been a finalist
three times and won the championship in 1999, she said.

Health clubs are benefiting from a growing enthusiasm for
exercise among seniors. Koshidaka Holdings Co., which operates
1,200 women-only fitness centers in Japan, says 50- and 60-year-olds make up more than 60 percent of its 500,000 members.

“The core customers have never really exercised in their
adult life before, so they feel the benefits from an easy, 30-minutes of weight training,” Hiroshi Koshidaka, the company’s
president, said in an interview. “Many come three times a week,
feel improvement, make friends, encourage others to join, and
stop people from quitting.”

Curve Boost

About 3 percent of members of Koshidaka’s Curves chain quit
annually -- about half the industry drop-out rate, he said.

Koshidaka rose 2.4 percent to 2,265 yen as of the close of
the Jasdaq Securities Exchange today, compared with a 0.6
percent gain in the Jasdaq Stock Index. The shares have advanced
15 percent this year and has increased an average of 88 percent
the past four years.

Social interaction can relieve stress on the elderly and
enables them to share information, according to Katsunori Kondo,
head of the Center for Wellbeing and Society at Nihon Fukushi
University in Aichi, central Japan. Kondo began studying aging
societies in 1999 and he and his colleagues now follow 111,000
seniors across Japan.

Dementia, Depression

They have found people who are more trusting of other
citizens were less likely to develop disabilities and lived
longer, he said. Also people who shunned others, avoided
shopping, sports and activities such as cooking and gardening,
were more prone to dementia and depression, said Kondo, who
advises the World Health Organization on ways to assess age-friendly cities.

The so-called social capital derived from trusting, caring
social networks also yields resilience, as evidenced last year
when an earthquake-triggered tsunami killed almost 20,000
Japanese, Harvard’s Kawachi said.

“What impressed the world was that there was no looting
and people queued to get food and supplies in tough times,”
Kawachi said. “The longevity of Japanese can’t be explained by
just lifestyle, food and nutrition, genetics and a universal
health system. Japan’s strong culture, solidarity and trust play
a role in their wellbeing, especially among elderly people.”

For Tokyo widow Doi, belonging to a team also adds a sense
of purpose.

“I have to practice every day or risk my friends giving up
on me,” she said. “I enjoy the chats, too. Everybody is
cheerful and says whatever they want to say, and that’s
refreshing.”